


100 Ways To Say "I Love You"

by owlboxes



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, I didn't mean for my first writing in this fandom to be so heavy, M/M, Rating May Change, Suicidal Thoughts, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlboxes/pseuds/owlboxes
Summary: A collection of Valoris drabbles, borne of prompts submitted to my tumblr. Content will vary in rating, which will be updated if need be.
Relationships: Valery Legasov/Boris Shcherbina
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	1. "Stay There. I'm Coming to Get You."

**Author's Note:**

> "Stay there. I'm coming to get you." 
> 
> For this chapter:  
>  **Rating:** Teen and Up  
>  **Warnings:** Thoughts of suicide

The idea was to go away, where no one would find him.

At least no one of importance, and not in the immediate aftermath. The thought of his neighbors stumbling upon him, or worse, a concerned colleague checking in when he hadn’t shown up on time, was nearly unbearable. The indignity of what his brilliant mind was telling him to do was something that he wanted to suffer alone, something that he felt guilty for. But living, what was he good for?

The return to his quiet apartment had seemed an unfair privilege in stark contrast to the empty halves of beds of the men he’d ordered to their death. Tens of thousands of people were sleeping in homes that were not theirs tonight, empty pillows beside them and a heaviness in their hearts that all of the reassurances of valiant sacrifice and bravery would never ease. He had watched men stand up and offer to give their lives for those that would thank them for their service in one breath and in the next, lie through their teeth about the reasons why that service was needed in the first place. Every night, he would lay awake. Every night, he would remember their faces, and imagine countless others who he would never meet, who he had sent to early graves with the decisions that he’d made - decisions that dated back to inaction so many years prior out of fear. And for what? For a career that spoke of seeking truth but hinged on readily burying that truth under a mountain of lies.

The motel was on the outskirts of the city, and he’d booked the furthest room from reception. 

It wasn’t pretty. The air was stale, wallpaper peeling and faded, the sheets smelled of cheap detergent. He’d dressed in his finest suit, laid himself out on top of the threadbare blanket with his back to the headboard, clutched a bottle of sleeping pills to his chest. His physician had offered them as a solution to his insomnia. It was the stress, he’d said, completely normal given the circumstances. Some sleep would do him a world of good. This didn’t feel like something that sleep could fix. It didn’t feel like anything could fix the state of the world.

It was a world that he didn’t know if he could live in, not only for the consequences of his own actions, but because he could shout his findings from the rooftops and it wouldn’t matter. There would be another accident, in another town, somewhere else in the Soviet Union, at another cheaply built reactor. More families displaced, more innocent people dead. It would happen again, and again, because of the stubbornness of a nation that would not admit when it was wrong. He only hoped that those few people that he held close to his heart would be far enough away to survive the next accident. He hoped they would forgive him, whatever the falsehoods the newspapers would offer for his demise. He hoped they would understand why, he thought, as he popped the lid off of the pill bottle and poured a handful of little caplets into his palm. He hoped that Boris would understand.

_Boris._

Somehow, in all of this, the thought had not occurred to him that his partner of many long months would have to hear the news of his passing. He could imagine him, in some little apartment somewhere in Moscow, picking up the daily paper and reading the headline, stopping in his tracks, heavy frown lines creasing his forehead, hands shaking. Would he cry? He’d never seen Boris cry before, not in the heaviest moments, not in their most private ones either. He’d come close once, when they’d been curled around one another in a bed much too small for the two of them, with a flight back to Moscow in the morning. There had been confessions then. He’d meant those words. He meant them still. 

He poured the pills back into the bottle and set it on the bedside table, uncapped. He picked up the phone, dialed a familiar number with trembling hands.

“Shcherbina.”

“… _Boris._ ”

He could hear the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Since their return to what was meant to be a normal life, their correspondence had been frequent but careful. Given how high-profile coverage of the accident had been, all eyes were on them, including those they could not see. He never would have dared to call at such an hour under normal circumstances. This was hardly normal circumstances.

“Valery. Are you alright?”

There was concern there - Boris knew him well, knew the sound of his voice, undoubtedly could tell that nothing was alright. He couldn’t answer immediately. His throat was suddenly too tight, his vision blurred over with tears. The half-choked sob that forced itself from his throat sounded strangled, sick, exactly the way that he felt. “No.”

He could hear rustling in the background. Boris was reaching for something. “Where are you?” He didn’t remember giving the name of the hotel, or where it was, or how he’d gotten here, how he’d called a cab hours ago, how he’d never thought that he would leave this place. He did remember the sound of a pen scribbling on paper, the sound of Boris’s breathing against the receiver, a little heavier than it had been before. Was that fear? Or was he sick too?

“Stay there. I’m coming to get you.” 

Valery nodded. Realized Boris couldn’t hear him. “Okay.”

More rustling, and then the line went dead. He reached for the pill bottle and capped it, then curled up on his side and counted the minutes until he heard a car outside, and footsteps on the wooden planks outside of the door. 

Forty two minutes. He didn’t feel like he was moving as he crossed the room to open the door. He couldn’t see Boris’s expression through the tears that had fogged his vision, but he could feel the relief in the way that Boris wrapped his arms around him, crushed him to his chest, held him as he fell apart, held on to him as if he might disappear into thin air otherwise. Somehow, they made their way across the room; Valery stood, swaying in place from exhaustion as Boris rid him of his suit jacket, his braces, his tie, his shirt. He sat on the edge of the bed feeling numb and allowed his socks to be tugged off, stared down at the man who had just driven across town in the middle of the night to piece him back together. His legs felt like lead as he lifted them so that he could lay on the worn-out sheets, lay his head on the pillow where, just an hour prior, he’d thought he would be taking his last breath. As Boris undressed, Valery focused on breathing. Again. Again. Another breath, another. 

The mattress dipped as Boris climbed into bed beside him, laid down on the opposite pillow, hesitated not a moment in wrapping Valery up in his arms, kissing his forehead. “It’s alright,” he murmured, gravelly voice low in the quiet of the cheap little motel room, wavering just enough to betray the fear he’d undoubtedly felt when he’d first answered the phone. “I’m here.”

“I’m sorry.” The words were out before Valery could stop them. He meant them. He was sorry for dragging Boris out of bed in the middle of the night. He was sorry for scaring him. He was sorry for instilling the thought in his mind that all of the love in the world might not have been enough to keep him alive one more night.

“It’s alright,” Boris repeated, softer now, squeezing him gently. Valery let his eyes slide closed, rested his head against Boris’s chest, listened to the steady beat of his heart and the rumble of his words as he spoke again. “Whatever this is, we’ll get through it together. We always have before.”

He was wrong. Love was more than enough.


	2. “Go back to bed."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valery can't sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Go back to bed." Requested by @kylos-scarf on tumblr. <3
> 
> For this chapter:  
>  **Rating:** General  
>  **Warnings:** None

  


_2:38AM._

At first, Boris wasn’t sure exactly what had woken him. The work had been grueling, If not physically at the very least mentally, and he’d been sleeping like the dead in the few hours that he wasn’t required to be working. 

_(With the exception of the first few nights. Confronting one’s own mortality tended to keep one from sleeping.)_

His initial assessment of his surroundings, before he’d even fully opened his eyes, left no clues as to why he was awake. He hadn’t been dreaming of anything that could have startled him awake. No physical discomfort, no need to climb out of bed and make his way to the tiny bathroom down the hall. He still felt tired - when did he not feel tired anymore? - and it would have been easy enough to roll over, to settle in again, to recapture those last few hours of rest until he had to be awake. 

But then he caught it: the faint smell of smoke. 

Suddenly everything else fell into place: the coldness of the mattress beside him, where for the last few weeks, a warm body had slept. The blankets had been pushed back. Glasses were missing from the bedside table at the far end of the bed. He pushed himself up onto one elbow, blinking away sleep and peering through the darkness. The reason for his own wakefulness was there, silhouetted by moonlight, staring out through the windows at an empty city. 

Where Boris had slept heavily, Valery was exactly the opposite. He had to be dragged to bed each night, pulled away from the paperwork spread out over their makeshift command center, so filled with a dogged sense of determination that he’d lost sight of how he was working himself to death. Even so, some nights he would sit propped up against the wall with the blankets pooled around his waist, notepad in hand, and wrack his brilliant mind for answers, often until Boris turned the lights out, physically removed the pen and paper from his hands, and pulled him down to the mattress. Some nights, he needed to be exhausted by other means (a pleasure that Boris had not once complained about mind you), and even then, had to be held until he stopped being restless, until he finally allowed his eyes to close.

It was the mark of a good man, telling of his selfless nature and of the kindness in his heart. A few sleepless nights meant nothing to Valery if it meant that he could find answers, save lives, direct the clean up efforts to minimize how many would go to an early grave. It didn’t escape either of them that just by being here, they’d lose the vast majority of their own time on earth. Boris didn’t allow himself to dwell on it. Valery did - and it only seemed to drive him to work harder.

Tonight’s surrender had been easy, a matter of a good meal and a hot shower and pulling the paperwork from Valery’s hands before it got too late. Perhaps that was the very reason why he was awake now.

Boris pushed himself from the bed with no small effort, every fiber of his being wanting to stay in bed. Were it not for the nagging voice in the back of his mind that wanted to know _why_ Valery was not sleeping, the rest of his being might have won. But there was something about the man that had always managed to override the sensible parts of him; he’d always managed to scale the carefully-built walls that Boris had constructed around himself as if they didn’t exist at all. And so, he slipped out from under the covers, bare feet touching the carpet without a sound as he padded across the room. He had a sneaking suspicion that even if he hadn’t tried to be quiet, Valery would not have noticed him. When the man was caught up in his thoughts, it seemed the world around him faded to nothing at all.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, his own voice rough from having just woken.

Valery didn’t turn. His shoulders seemed to sag further, even as he took another drag from his cigarette, breathed the smoke out, followed it with a long sigh. “No.” 

The few steps that brought him to Valery’s side were taken slowly, as if hesitant to interrupt whatever internal monologue he’d already paused. He looked out over the city, over Pripyat’s rooftops and the trees peeking out from between some of them, a whole ocean of empty buildings, empty windows, empty streets. In moments like this, it felt almost as if they were the only two people in the world. Would that be so terrible? He slid his arms around Valery’s middle, against the soft swell of his stomach, pushing under the threadbare fabric of his undershirt to rest against warm skin, rested his chin against a freckled shoulder. The contact always seemed to ease his melancholy.

Valery leaned back against him, tilted his head to rest it against Boris’s own, breathed another sigh. “Do you suppose anything will ever feel…normal, after this?”

What did he mean by _this_? The accident? Their exposure? The first time they’d fallen into bed together? The night that he’d whispered that he _loved_ Valery across the worn fabric of their pillowcases? It was a complex question with a complex answer and Boris couldn’t seem to figure out where to start. “Does it matter?”

The non-committal sound that he received in reply made it clear that his answer was not enough. It was his own turn to sigh as he turned his head to press a kiss to Valery’s cheek. Things would not be normal after this, not in the weeks that followed, not years later. No one endured such hardship and went unscathed. But this hardship had brought with it a joy that he had never imagined finding here, one that he still struggled not to feel guilty about - how could one find even a sliver of happiness with the knowledge of the suffering others were living through? And yet, here it was: the man in his arms, the steady beat of his heart under Boris’s lips as he pressed another kiss just beneath the line of his jaw. Something worth dying for.

“No. I don’t think so,” he finally managed. “But I’m not so sure that I want that normal anymore. Not if it means going back to a life without you.” 

Another kiss to Valery’s cheek - this time he felt a little twitch, the corners of the infuriating man’s lips pulling up into a smile that he couldn’t resist. He could see it reflected in the glass, brighter than the thousands of stars shining overhead, brighter than the moon.

“Come on now. Go back to bed. Don’t make me carry you.” 

With their fingers entwined, they crossed the room, slipped back under the covers. Boris wrapped his arms around Valery, pulled him in close, pressed a plethora of kisses across his cheeks and his nose and his forehead, kissed his eyelids once they closed, and the corner of his lips. And as he felt the reassuring weight of his lover relaxing into his side, he allowed sleep to claim him too, intent on embracing this new normal that they’d found together.


End file.
